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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26157583">the place to ruralise</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed'>wreathed</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cruising, Ficlet, Holding Hands, London, M/M, Pre-Canon, Shame</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:49:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>593</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26157583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Irving loitering without intent — or so he thinks.</p>
<p>For the <a href="https://twitter.com/terror_exe">@terror_exe</a> prompt: <a href="https://twitter.com/terror_exe/status/1294245371292549120">cornelius hickey/john irving, hurt/comfort, music, romance, hand-holding</a>.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lt John Irving/Original Cornelius Hickey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>@terror_exe Flash Fest</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the place to ruralise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Irving loiters without intent outside a public house. The town of Hampstead may not be fashionable, and its reputation for rowdy behaviour seems to be justified judging by the shouts and fiddle-playing he can hear within, but he had arrived in the day-time only to admire the exterior architecture of one of its grandest residences. He had not envisioned staying after sundown, but the sight of Fenton House’s red brickwork set against its formal garden had quite distracted him from the time.</p>
<p>In two short months, Terror will set sail, and no-one will ever know he has ventured here.</p>
<p>“Are you lost, sir?” he hears a man ask him from the shadows, and Irving startles as he makes an awkward quarter turn towards the gloomy alleyway at one side of the tavern.</p>
<p>A face meets his own, lit with a glow from a source Irving cannot identify: a soft face set against round, blond curls. Soft-voiced, too: a green lad from a green country. A working man’s clothes, but he is warm in a long twill coat the colour of laurel leaves.</p>
<p>“I am,” Irving says. “May I ask your name?”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div>Before Irving had been alive, he had once read, the Heath hosted a telegraph station connecting the Admiralty to its fleet at Great Yarmouth. Now it hosts something quite different. Rowdy behaviour. The degeneration of society, inverse to technological advancement. Noah had no steam engine to power him, yet the ark had rebirthed clean all civilisation just the same.<p>Irving and Cornelius Hickey look out from where their feet plant themselves beside each other on the damp grass. In the distance, the soot-lined glow of London bobs below them like a schooner anchored in a lagoon. It is nothing as dramatic as Edinburgh’s crenelated elevation</p>
<p>A hand rough from manual work rests against Irving’s thigh, and he steps back from the advance in alarm.</p>
<p>“It’s all right, sir; let me—”</p>
<p>“Please!” Irving exclaims. “On no account!”</p>
<p>Cornelius smiles. “Come with me here for a gentle evening stroll, have you sir?” He makes a gentle, sceptical sound burred by his heavy accent. “The proclivities of the West Heath are well known.”</p>
<p>“We can’t,” Irving protests. He has been mistaken. He allows himself one desperate gasp in, the kind of a drowning man. There is no sickly smoke here to fill the throat; it is as if they are in country air. “Let me take your hand instead.”</p>
<p>He thinks of Malcolm. He thinks of the Irish men he has met on ships over the years; many God-fearing, others not.</p>
<p>They stay together like that in the dark. Whenever the sound of a man finding his pleasure filters through the trees, Irving squeezes his eyes shut, but doing so does nothing for his ears. Cornelius laughs kindly and squeezes Irving’s fingers.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div>Cornelius Hickey; caulker’s mate. Irving is distracted so successfully by the industrious administration of Terror’s men coming aboard that it is only after Hickey saunters away towards where his small smooth hand had not known to point to when Irving reddens like a Peeler’s lantern has found him in the mist.<p>It is not as common a name as John, but hardly impossible to be duplicated. God is showing His wrath for Irving’s transgression by laying on this amusement at his expense, and he dutifully burns with shame because of it.</p>
<p>A divine comedy, a sharp shrewd representative of the devil to trail him to the icy end of the earth; this was one Cornelius Hickey whom Irving did not trust at all.</p>
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